


Charybdis

by DownToTheSea



Series: Revenant [2]
Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: Angst, Case Fic, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Panic Attacks, Post-Canon, trauma aftermath
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-08-21 16:09:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16579775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DownToTheSea/pseuds/DownToTheSea
Summary: About a month after their escape from the virtual world, Helen and Nikola go on vacation to Italy to rest and recover. But almost as soon as they arrive, they're drawn into a nearby murder case - one which could have disastrous consequences for Nikola.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to write this sequel pretty much ever since I finished Revenant, but it wasn't until I was doing my mini-Nano projects this year that inspiration really hit. I'm going to try to be better about updating more frequently, but I also have a lot of fics to work on, haha, so we'll have to see.
> 
> RE the tags: Nikola having OCD is a headcanon that's very important to me, and I'll be doing my best to write it and his coping with the events of Revenant in an accurate and respectful way. However please let me know if I screw anything up!

Helen stepped out of the car onto the gravel driveway and turned to face Nikola, who was getting out of the passenger side. “Well,” she said. “Here we are.” She swept an arm towards her vacation home.

Nikola pushed his sunglasses up into his hair and surveyed the house with an unimpressed expression. “I thought it’d be bigger.”

Helen let out an exasperated sigh.

His comment was technically justified: the stone house had more of an air of cozy comfort than extravagance. It was certainly nothing to some of the palatial residences that many of the affluent tourists preferred. But Helen loved it all the more for that.

It was tucked away in a quiet corner of the countryside, on the edge of a small forest that had come with the plot of land Helen had purchased. She didn’t think she’d ever met her neighbors in all her years of coming here. Probably for the best, as they might wonder why she never seemed to age.

A path with more stones laid into it led up to the patio, sheltered by an overhang with bright red flowers decorating it thickly and creeping up the sides of the house. Inside, Helen knew, was a small sitting room that led into the rest of the house: a kitchen, a dining room, an office/library, and then a couple of bedrooms and a bathroom on the second level. There was also a garage, a more modern addition, but Helen had converted that into a laboratory in the 70s. Her car would have to simply sit outside in the hopes that the weather would remain fair.

“Remember,” Helen said, “I usually come alone. I hardly need a mansion for a quiet weekend.” She went back to get a few cases of luggage out of the car and Nikola did likewise, balancing his three suitcases on top of one another and following her to the door. He waited as she dug around for the keys.

“Right, yeah. But Helen, could you remind me how special I am to you when I can thank you properly?” His head appeared from behind the suitcases and he waggled his eyebrows at her suggestively.

“You’ve thanked me quite enough already,” Helen said, smiling, finally getting the door open and stepping through. The place smelled a bit musty, but everything was untouched, so a bit of dusting and having the windows open for a while would get the house in perfect shape.

Helen’s smile faltered a little as she watched him toss his suitcases on the floor in a haphazard pile and go curiously prowling around his new accomodations. Nikola  _ was  _ special to her: probably more so than he would ever know. But that wasn’t the only reason she had invited him to come with her this time. She wished it had been.

Over a month had passed since the two of them had defeated Adam Worth for what Helen hoped was the final time. He had somehow managed to hide away in their computer system after the nanite incident, biding his time, before stealing Nikola’s body and forcing his mind into a nightmarish virtual scenario, living the same torturous day over and over again.

For Helen it had only been a few hours before she had managed to pull Nikola out, but he had let it slip that it had been much, much longer for him. He refused to tell her exactly how long, but Helen had her own theories.

She caught glimpses sometimes that confirmed them. She had never before known Nikola to stick to her quite so determinedly, or to startle so easily at what seemed normal or inconsequential to her, like Henry booting up a computer or anyone mentioning vampires other than himself. With everyone else and even occasionally with her, he was distant and rather listless, and Henry had worriedly informed her two weeks ago that he had barely been in the lab at all lately. That same day, Will had told her Nikola hadn’t insulted him, Thomas Edison, or humanity in general even once.

When he thought she wasn’t looking, Helen would catch him with his eyes unfocused, concentrating hard on something she couldn’t see. What was more, she had practically had to drill it into his head that he would be welcome to come with her to Italy. Such behavior was so distinctly unlike Nikola that it made restless concern twist through her. Getting him away from the Sanctuary, and the dark corridors their lives so often involved, seemed like a better and better idea the longer it went on.

Will, Henry, and Erika had everything under control at home and Helen’s phone number just in case, so Helen and Nikola had set off together for her once-every-seven-years vacation to Italy, which she had extended to at least a week and possibly longer. Nikola had noticed this but said nothing. Then again, even under normal circumstances he would leap at the opportunity to spend more time alone with her.

With Nikola’s mildly begrudging help (“I’m not going to be using that room, why would I bother cleaning it?”) the two of them managed to get the house in order in about a third of the time it would have taken Helen to do it by herself. Nikola balanced all the luggage on top of one another, put a metal plate under it, and levitated it up the stairs.

About ten seconds later, Helen heard a spectacular crash from the bedroom, followed by a quiet “Oops” from Nikola.

“Helen,” he said, clattering downstairs. “I have good news and bad news. The good news is the luggage is all where it’s supposed to be. The bad news is – ”

“You spilled it all over creation?”

“Kinda.”

Helen pursed her lips together to hide a smile. “Well, don’t trouble yourself about it. I didn’t pack anything especially fragile.”

He hovered near her as she went upstairs and threw open all the windows. “Are you almost done doing boring things?”

“Nikola, the point of a vacation is to do boring things. Relax. Catch up on some reading. Do paperwork.”

Nikola gave her a judgmental look, crossing his arms. “Helen, no one but you does paperwork on vacation. The point is to relax by doing  _ fun  _ things. And I could think of a few of those.”

Helen raised her eyebrows.

“...Like checking out that lab you have in the garage?”

“No,” she said immediately, although she was privately glad to hear him so enthusiastic about it. “You are  _ not  _ to set foot inside the garage until tomorrow morning at the earliest. Sleep first, lab later. I am not dealing with a jet-lagged vampire all week.”

Nikola sniffed. “As if vampires could fall prey to some fallible human problem like jet lag.”

“You slept for a day and a half when we got back from Africa,” she reminded him.

He waved a hand. “I was newly revamped, that doesn’t count. Besides, you kept me up all hours of the night professing your profound relief that I was alive and immortal again.”

_ “I  _ kept  _ you  _ up all hours of the night?”

“Alright,” Nikola allowed. “There was mutual keeping up all hours of the night.”

“I should think so.”

 

But a hot shower and an early dinner on the somewhat rickety kitchen table (Helen hadn’t had it replaced since the 1950s) seemed to change Nikola’s mind about the advisability of a late night. He kept yawning during dinner, which was really only dinner for Helen; for Nikola it was “sit-next-to-Helen-and-drink-wine.” (He was enchanted by the more than respectable wine selection even in her vacation home, and seemed to consider it a sign that she had always meant to invite him along someday.)

“To bed with you,” she said as soon as they were finished.

He went along with the prod in the back with which she accompanied this and they ascended the stairs. “Helen, do you mind recording that so I can listen to it when I can properly appreciate it?”

“Perhaps later.”

Helen left him in the bedroom while she went into the adjoining bathroom to wash up and change into pajamas; when she came back, he was facedown in the quilts and utterly dead to the world. She went over to stand next to him, looking down at the little she could see of his face that wasn’t mashed into her pillow (he had rolled over to her side, naturally.)

She wished she could have said that the tension eased when he was sleeping; that he looked peaceful and content, like he was finally getting some much-needed rest. But there was a deep furrow in his brow, as if he was trying to solve some impossible problem in his sleep, and his usual sleepy mumblings were replaced by fearful whispers that try as she might, Helen couldn’t make sense of.

Sighing, she knelt down and pried his shoes off, lifting his feet onto the bed and pulling a blanket over him. She would have unbuttoned his waistcoat at least, but that would have required rolling him over, which would unquestionably have woken him up. As restless as his sleep might have been, Helen knew all too well that any sleep at all was better than he had been faring recently.

So instead, she smoothed his hair (which immediately sprang back up into chaos) and leaned down, kissing the top of his head. Then she got into bed herself and opened a book.

“Shame if we don’t celebrate our first night here together with boundless passion,” Nikola mumbled. Well, she had  _ thought  _ he was dead to the world.

“Go back to sleep, Nikola,” said Helen, amused despite herself. “Boundless passion can wait for the morning.”

“I’d rather watch you instead,” he said with a lascivious smirk, the effect of which was somewhat ruined by the fact that his eyes were still half-closed.

“I’m afraid I’ll be a rather dull subject of study,” Helen said.

“You could never be dull, my dear.”

She looked over at him again. His eyes were already closed.

“Do as you will, then,” she said, but softly. “Good night, Nikola.”

“Night, Helen,” he said against his (her) pillow. He stretched a hand up expectantly, but with such an expression of genuine affection and – longing, perhaps, although that wasn’t quite it, that Helen only detached one of her own hands from her book to slide into his, weaving their fingers together.

Nikola smiled. “Love you,” he whispered, and then, almost inaudibly, he added, “Stay all night?”

That question had become a habit over the last month. Helen squeezed his hand. “I will,” she promised him quietly. She stroked his hand with her thumb, but he had already gone back to sleep.

 

Several miles away, a middle-aged man was strolling along the starlit beach. Even a casual observer could have immediately identified him as a tourist: he was in fact Canadian, and had been here for less than a week.

He’d had to walk quite a distance already to get away from the lights and music and crowds of the rest of his fellow travelers outside their seaside hotel, but it was worth it just to have a few moments of peace and quiet. This vacation had been his family and friends’ idea, not his. “It’s been three years,” they had said, ganging up on him. “You need to get out of the house.”

So out of the house he had gotten, and it had been a good idea, really. He had been having more fun than he expected to, but tonight he just needed a break. In the back of his mind was a vague idea of doing some night photography once he reached that little outcropping of shoreline just ahead.

There was a soft splash from behind him, barely audible over the normal sounds of the water lapping against the beach. Even if he had heard it, he wouldn’t have paid any attention to it.

It was only when he reached his destination and turned around that he noticed a shadowed form on the beach behind him. Human-sized, but misshapen somehow, and he took an instinctive step back before it moved toward him and all fear vanished from his mind.

He didn’t run. He could not imagine that running had ever been an option. His expression melted into a hazy, semi-conscious smile. He felt, for the first time in a long while, that everything was right with the world.

He went on feeling like that as all the blood left his body, right until everything went dark.


	2. Maelstrom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I managed an update! (A bit nervous about this one, I hope it's alright!) Again, please note the tags as they begin to crop up in this chapter.

It was the middle of the night when Helen woke up again. There was no moon tonight, and their room was nearly pitch-black. Nikola’s hand was no longer clasped in hers.

She reached out blindly, trying to ignore a wave of trepidation. This wasn’t one of the big guy’s sappy romance movies, where people fell asleep and woke up gazing into each other’s eyes. People moved in their sleep. (But Nikola usually moved closer, to shamelessly steal as much of Helen’s body heat as he could.)

She groped around in the sheets for a few seconds before realizing Nikola wasn’t here at all. Her sensible thoughts from only a moment ago vanished and she sat bolt upright with a jolt of fear, her stomach roiling. Already she could see Adam distorting his brilliant smile, forcing his deft scientist’s hands around her throat. Nikola’s name was on the tip of her tongue, her hand fumbling for the light, when her vision finally adjusted and she saw him sitting on the window seat, knees drawn up to his chin.

He was so deep in concentration he didn’t seem to have noticed her movement. His hands were locked around his knees and clenched tight. One finger tapped against his leg:  _ one, two, three.  _ He stopped, breathing in deep and releasing it… then taking another shaky breath and starting again.

_ One, two, three _ .  _ One, two, three _ .  _ One, two, three. _

Helen sat there frozen, torn between relief and concern. Eventually, she slid out of bed and went quietly over to the window seat. Nikola’s head turned when she sat down next to him, folding her legs up to rest her feet on the opposite wall.

She leaned against him, cheek on his shoulder, and wrapped an arm firmly around his waist. Putting an arm around her in return, Nikola nuzzled her hair and sighed quietly.

_One, two, three,_ his fingers still tapped on his leg. Helen closed her eyes, trying to marshal her twisting thoughts into order. _One, two, three._

She sat there with him until she couldn’t stay awake any longer, and he was still counting when she drifted off against his shoulder. His eyes were unfocused and gazing into the distance. Helen wasn’t sure if he was looking at something she couldn’t see, or searching for an answer to a question she didn’t know.

 

The next morning, Helen found herself back in bed when she woke up. The window curtains were closed now, letting in only a small crack of early sun. It was almost as if last night hadn’t happened at all, except that Nikola was once again missing.

Swearing as last night’s fear coursed through her again, Helen threw off the covers and jumped out of bed, snatching the gun out from under her pillow. She cast around for a glimpse of him, but he wasn’t in the bathroom, he wasn’t at the window, he –

He was coming in the door with a metal tray hovering in front of him. His mouth was slightly open and apparently he couldn’t decide if he should be amused or shocked.

“There you are,” she said unnecessarily, lowering the gun. “If you would be so kind as to stop running off whenever it suited you.” This came out rather sharper than she had intended.

Nikola settled on shocked amusement, but much to Helen’s relief (and surprise) he didn’t comment on her quickness to jump to the wrong conclusion, or the weapon in her hand. “I didn’t run off anywhere. I walked downstairs, very sedately I might add, to get your early morning tea.”

Helen raised an eyebrow.

“Because I’m very loving and attentive,” he said with saccharine innocence, planting a kiss on her cheek before kissing her hand as well. “And also because I kinda maybe snuck into your lab this morning while you were asleep.”

“Is that so.” Helen took the tea from him anyway and sat down. He plopped next to her on the bed.

“Just out of curiosity, have you updated  _ anything  _ in that building since the 80s? I half-expected a Toto music video to break out while I was there.”

Helen gave him a sidelong look. “I see Henry has been introducing you to more internet memes.”

“Hmph, as if I needed his help. Anyway, I thought a token of my eternal adoration might soften the blow of my property trespass a little.”

“There was no need,” Helen said, sipping her tea contentedly. “I expected you to be in there as soon as the clock struck midnight last night.”

Nikola cleared his throat, avoiding her eyes and changing the subject. “So, my love, what shall we do today? I have some suggestions, if you're open.”

“I have no doubt.”

 

They spent part of the morning pursuing some of Nikola’s suggestions, which Helen deemed quite excellent, and part of it working in the garage lab. In stark contrast to the night before, Nikola seemed almost chipper, and Helen was beginning to wonder if she had dreamed the entire thing.

But she did notice he still wasn’t going near any of the computers.

In the afternoon, she insisted on getting some paperwork done, over many protestations involving the word “boring” from Nikola. It wasn’t terribly surprising that despite turning his nose up at the dullness, he decided not to stay in the lab by himself and followed her to her office, where he lounged on a couch, reading and tossing out a frequent comment on how hot she looked.

He fixed her tea again a few hours later and perched on her desk drinking wine, “to keep you company.”

“Remember, Nikola, I didn’t stock this place in anticipation of you spending any length of time here,” she warned. “You’ll drink it all within a few days if you keep this up.”

“Helen, are you telling me you do stock the Sanctuary with me in mind? How kind of you.” He looked delighted, and cheerfully ignored her point.

 

Nikola felt the weight on the bed shift as Helen climbed in next to him. Compared to recent weeks, today had been a good day on the whole, and Nikola had been hoping that it might last, but after dinner the mood had evaporated.

Now he was scrolling listlessly through some figures on his tablet, trying to ignore the constant background noise in his head, the endless litany of the points he had spent all of last night proving to himself:  _ no underlying data stream one extensive atmosphere and unpredictable events two no temporal reset three no underlying data stream one four extensive atmosphere and unpredictable events two five –  _

He realized abruptly that he had zoned out again and Helen was giving him an odd look. Swallowing, he forced himself to stop the mental stream, his skin crawling with the effort. At once he could feel himself tense, half-expecting Adam to jump at them then and there.

“You look ravishing, my dear,” he said to distract himself, and winced at how by-rote it sounded. Now Helen looked truly worried, and Nikola’s heart sank even lower. He had tried to keep her from seeing the worst of the side effects from Adam’s little jaunt into his body, but every day it seemed like he failed a little more. He didn’t know which was worse: the fact that it was clearly paining her, or that he wasn’t sure if that pain or Helen herself were even real, and this was just some new torment for him.

Thankfully, before she could say anything, her cell phone rang. Helen snatched it immediately, no doubt concerned about a potential Sanctuary crisis. She looked at the number and went “Hmm.”

“Who is it?” Nikola tried to see over her shoulder.

“Amatheia. She runs the nearest Sanctuary. I should answer this.” She shot him a look that said she hadn’t forgotten how he was acting and lifted the phone to her ear. “Magnus here.”

Nikola sank back against the pillows, his own thoughts rising to the surface again.  _ No underlying data stream one nineteen extensive atmosphere and unpredictable events two twenty – _

“Of course it would be no trouble,” Helen was saying next to him. With heroic effort, Nikola kept himself from scowling. He’d come here to get away and be alone with Helen, not to get dragged into some Sanctuary obligation that would involve a bunch of  _ people  _ running around doing foolish human things  _ – _

“I’ll check it out immediately.”

Nikola’s heart stopped.

_ “Nikola? Perhaps you’d care to go over the mission details again, for all of our benefit,”  _ he heard Helen say, with crystal clarity. A scream built up in his throat, trapping itself there and choking him. He would have liked to let it out, or to reach for her, or even just to move, but he was once again a prisoner in his own body. A relentless pressure seized his chest, and all he could do was try not to break under the weight of it.

 

“Magnus here,” Helen said, turning away from Nikola so he wouldn’t see the effort it took to push her worry aside and assume her role of unflappable Sanctuary leader.

“Dr. Magnus,” Amatheia greeted her. She was younger, one of the newest Sanctuary leaders replacing the old heads who didn’t want to follow Helen’s operations underground. A half-mermaid, she was a talented doctor with a team that specialized in tracking and assisting aquatic abnormals. She sounded rather nervous. “I’m very sorry to bother you on vacation.”

“No need to apologize,” Helen assured her, glancing back over her shoulder at Nikola, who had gone back to mindlessly tapping on his tablet with a distant and troubled expression.

“Adjust the temperature up another two degrees,” Amatheia called to someone on the other end, then returned to the conversation. “I have a new arrival here who seems to be having some trouble adjusting to the climate we built for them. We have the situation under control, but it may take a while to optimize to a comfortable level. Something else has come up that I could use some help with while we’re busy here, though, if you can spare the time.”

“Anything I can do.”

“I was just notified that a tourist has been found dead on the coast only a few miles from where you’re staying, and it may be abnormal-related. All of my team is working on the artificial climate or out on mission already. Could you look into it? We do have a tendency to get sea serpents moving nearer this time of year, and if one of them is distressed enough to be violent – ”

“Of course,” Helen said. “It would be no trouble.”

“Thank you so much, Dr. Magnus.” Relief was so evident in her voice that Helen was reminded how very young she was. She smiled.

“I’ll check it out immediately,” she promised. “And I’ll let you know what I find out.”

Amatheia gave her the details and location, thanked her again, and hung up. Helen set her phone back down on the bedside table and turned back to Nikola, explanation already forming on her lips.

It died as soon as she caught a glimpse of him. He looked like he’d been carved in stone; he wasn’t moving so much as a hairsbreadth. His face was so blank it sent a shiver through Helen.

“Nikola?” She crawled nearer, all the worry she’d tried to push down earlier crashing back onto her. “Nikola!”

On closer inspection, Helen didn’t think he was even breathing. Nikola could technically go without oxygen for several minutes or longer if necessary, but it still wasn’t a good sign. She lifted a hand towards him, then hesitated.

“Nikola, I’m going to check your pulse,” she said gently. No answer, although she wasn’t sure if it was because he hadn’t heard her or simply couldn’t respond. She slid her hand onto his neck and immediately pulled in back in shock. His heart was beating so fast it seemed as if it might burst out of his chest at that very moment.

Her chest knotted up in sympathy at the realization that he was in the middle of a panic attack. It would hardly have taken a genius to figure out why. How could she have been so foolish, not realizing how he would interpret that conversation? She wished vehemently she had taken the call in another room.

This time she laid two fingers on his cheek. Enough to ground him, she hoped, but not enough to be overwhelming. “Nikola,” she said again, stroking his cheek. “Nikola, concentrate on me.”

His eyes flicked up to meet hers; that was a good sign. Less good was the fact that they were flashing wildly between blue and red and black and back again. Glancing down, Helen saw his claws were out and had shredded the tops of the blankets.

“Listen to me. Whatever you think is happening, it’s not. We’re in the real world, in Italy. Adam’s gone. I’m here,” she told him softly. “I’m here.”

She lost track of how many times she said it, repeating it to him even though she wasn’t sure he heard her. After a while she dared to hope he had relaxed a little, and then a little more, until his eyes stayed blue and his claws retracted.

“Helen,” he said hoarsely, and at last took a shuddering breath. Stiffly, like he had forgotten how to move, he folded her into his arms and buried his face in her neck. She could feel every inhale trembling and faltering, and every exhale was a ragged sob. But at least he was breathing again.

Helen touched his back, rubbing it lightly. Was this the first time this had happened, or were there more that he just hadn’t told her about? Or – and her stomach dropped out from under her – had it happened while he was still trapped in the simulation? Had the virtual echo of herself been there for him? No, she thought. Adam would have made sure he was alone.

Her fingers curled into him. “Nikola,” she began in a low voice, then trailed off.

“Sorry,” he choked. “I’m sorry.” He squeezed her tightly one last time before pulling back, even if it was painfully clear he didn’t want to let go. He refused to look at her directly.

Another pang shot through her. “Don’t say that, Nikola. It’s not… I should have realized.”

“Realized what?” he said bitterly. “That I – can’t even listen to you talking on the  _ phone  _ anymore without – ” He swallowed. His arms were locked against his chest, curling around himself. “I told you I wasn’t going to be much fun,” he ended in a low, hard voice.

“Nonsense,” Helen said through a thick catch in her throat. “Nonsense.” Blinking fiercely, she wrapped her arms around him again. “Remember what you told me after the first great war,” she murmured, letting him shift until he was fitted comfortably in her arms, face hidden in the crook of her neck.

“...That you looked hot in white?” Nikola ventured, voice muffled and wavery.

“No, not that.”

_ “There’s nothing to forgive,” Nikola had told her over and over again, unfailingly gentle and understanding no matter how many times she woke him up crying or screaming or unable to sleep at all, or wanted him near on the days she couldn’t even force herself out of bed. _

Quietly, she told him the same. Nikola sighed, and held her tightly in the long silence that followed.

“I beg to differ,” he said at last. Helen was about to object when he continued. “That’s not how I wanted to ruin the bed, you know.”

Helen shook her head with relief and kept holding on.

 

“What was that call really about?” Nikola asked some time later. He lay with his head in her lap, one of her hands clasped in both of his. He seemed to be occupied in a fascinated study of the lines on her hand, tracing them softly with a finger. Under ordinary circumstances, Helen might have reclaimed her hand, but it seemed to relax him more than anything else had yet done.

She combed her free hand through his hair and cautiously told him the substance of Amatheia’s request.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” she said as soon as she was finished. “Just a frightened sea serpent, most likely.”

“No offense, Helen, but I’ve heard that before. Was it just a frightened sea serpent off the coast of Brazil back in ‘38?”

“Dear lord, I thought I’d heard the end of that sixty years ago.”

“And here I thought you knew me better than that.” Nikola squeezed her hand. “I’m coming along, of course.”

Helen squeezed back. “We’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

 

They left at dawn and drove down to the coast. As usual, Helen flashed her fake ID with brazen confidence and they garnered access to the crime scene with no problems. (She was Dr. J. Crusher; he was N. Edison, which he was certain someone at the Sanctuary had planned with a hearty laugh.)

The body had already been removed, but blood had seeped deep into the sand. There were still authorities milling about, and Helen stopped to talk to a young detective whose name Nikola heard and promptly forgot. He half-listened to the conversation, but everything seemed terribly vague and unlikely to lead anywhere of note: tourist out on a walk late at night, found the next morning, didn’t know anyone in the country, let alone the area. What was the cause of death, Dr. Crusher wanted to know? Blood loss from a puncture wound near the heart, weapon not found.

Helen was clearly troubled by this, and thanked the detective for his help. She and Nikola left him behind and headed towards the water’s edge.

“Whatever did this, it wasn’t a sea serpent,” Nikola said. “You saw how far up the shore it happened. Last time I checked, Ursula hadn’t been making any deals lately.”

“And sea serpents aren’t known for their love of bladed weapons. But what could it have been?” Helen looked around, taking in the rest of the scene around them.

“Good old-fashioned humans being awful to each other?” Nikola suggested.

Helen gave him a look. “Perhaps, but let’s look around before we jump to any conclusions.”

Much to Nikola’s chagrin, it was only a moment later that the wind changed and he sniffed instinctively. “Huh.”

“What is it?”

“Abnormal,” he said rather grudgingly. “Humans are still awful though.”

Helen rolled her eyes. “Can you track it?”

“I can try.” He set off, following the trail of the scent he had picked up. It had a bite to it, like a late autumn breeze heralding the approach of winter.

They managed to stroll away inconspicuously up the coast. Helen glanced around for any useful sign or clue, but the sand was trampled beyond usefulness. It was a lovely day: sun shining, the ocean waves bright and blue, and a warm breeze tickling Nikola’s skin.

“Do you recognize it?” she asked as they went along, making hardly any noise in the soft sand.

He wiggled his hand and frowned. “Ish. Seems familiar, but there’s so much other stuff floating around, I can’t say for sure.”

About a mile down the coast, he stopped in his tracks.

“Well?” Helen asked, coming to a halt beside him. He thought she seemed rather on edge, noticing that her hand had strayed to where she kept her gun.

Nikola shook his head and pointed across the Mediterranean. “I for one am not going swimming in this suit, and as much as I might enjoy the sight of you soaking wet… You would need to sprout gills and fins to get far enough. No wonder I could hardly smell it, it must be at least several miles out.”

“Damn,” said Helen. “Could we send an underwater drone after it?”

He shrugged. “It’s worth a shot.”

Helen thought for a moment, then nodded. “Very well. You stay here, see if you can pick up any more traces, and make sure it doesn’t come back out. I’ll go back and get the equipment.”

“Helen,” said Nikola, tilting his head to one side, “in what universe does it make sense for you to walk back when I have super speed?”

“The one where we’re in full view for miles around, and if anyone stops me at the car, I can think of a decent cover story instead of telling them we’re Mulder and Scully searching for aliens.”

Nikola crossed his arms, pouting. “I only used that once.”

“Once is enough.” She patted his arm. “I won’t be long.”

“Do you think I’m hotter than Gillian Anderson?” he called after her, but she only turned and gave him an exasperated look. Nikola sighed when he was left alone on the beach, the sound of the waves and a few bird calls his only company. He examined the sand with an evil look. That way lay a ruined suit, so he started pacing instead, sliding his claws in and out just for something to do with his hands.

He tried valiantly to keep his thoughts from straying to the place he knew they would if he left them alone, but he might as well have been trying to persuade Helen to drink coffee. From out of the corner of his eye, he spied a pattern of glittering sun on the water’s surface that looked suspiciously grid-like, and, well. It was all downhill from there.

The familiar spike of fear wasn’t even over before he reached out automatically with his electromagnetic senses and probed around, but there was no background power signature of a computer, no EM signatures where they shouldn’t be, nothing at all to indicate he was anywhere but the depressingly realest of reality. Still he searched every corner within several miles doggedly, and then when he was done, he went over it all again twice more.

“Just one day,” he muttered to himself, listening to birdsong and shuffling through his memory trying to figure out whether he’d heard that  _ exact  _ sound before, whether it was a recorded memory of birdsong pulled from his mind or something truly new. “Can’t even go on a nice fun murder investigation with Helen.”

After he was finished, he bent over with his hands on his knees, inhaling deeply and very unsteady on his feet. As he was learning, even vampires weren’t supposed to do this non-stop, or to use their powers almost every waking minute, and certainly not while running on roughly half an hour of sleep. God, he was exhausted.

His eyes closed of their own accord, and he was so tired he couldn’t stop himself; he  _ had  _ to blink twice more, and then he had to do it six more times to get the total up to nine (three times three: an excellent number), but that didn’t feel quite right, and neither did twenty-seven, and before he knew it he had been standing there staring blankly into the distance for at least a full minute and was up to one hundred and fourteen.

Nikola let out a long, frustrated hiss and rubbed his now dry eyes. Keeping them closed, he mentally reset the tally before counting slowly and firmly to three. The world slid back into order and he opened his eyes feeling quite pleased with himself.

At least, until he spotted the tracks leading out of the water a few feet away.

Nikola swore profusely in five different languages, running over so fast he wouldn’t have been visible to the human eye. There was the sharp scent, focused and stronger now. He followed the trail up to a patch of grass further up the beach, where the tracks ended in the tall grass but the scent remained. He pivoted, trying to catch where it had gone, when his eyes fell abruptly on Helen, standing on the line between grass and sand. Her eyebrows were raised.

“Helen, well, my dear, that was faster than I expected. Not that you aren’t stunningly in shape, but,” Nikola stammered. “I have some, ah, not great news – ”

“Nikola.” Her musical voice cut through his attempts at an explanation. It sounded rather strange, but nothing in Nikola’s world had been normal for quite some time. He felt very relaxed all of a sudden. Helen was here, so of course everything would be alright. The insistent beating of numbers and phrases inside his head faded into the background. Exhaustion crashed over him like a wave. He swayed slightly before righting himself and giving Helen a dizzy grin.

“See, even your sheer presence is intoxicating.” His voice seemed to be coming from a long way away.

“Nikola, are you quite alright?”

“Nope.” Nikola heard himself laugh. It had an edge of hysteria to it. “No alright-ness here. None. Nada. Zilch! Zilch is such a fun word, you gotta give humans credit for that at least. Don’t you agree, Helen?”

Helen was standing next to him now. Funny, he thought vaguely, he hadn’t noticed her moving closer. She put a hand on his cheek, just a ghost of a touch that hardly seemed real. But then, Nikola and reality weren’t on very good terms at the moment.

“Come home with me, Nikola,” she said, her voice echoing in his ears.

Nikola lifted his hand to hers where it lay on his cheek, the unnatural exuberance fading. “I want to.” His voice shook, his next words hardly a whisper. “But Helen, you deserve better.”

Helen smiled reassuringly at him. Something jarred in his head; she wasn’t acting right, and it just wasn’t  _ her  _ smile –

The image of Helen flickered, and he caught a glimpse of damp blue-black skin and huge black eyes in her place. His claws slid out; he raised his arm, but he was still disoriented and the movement was slow. Before he could so much as swipe at not!Helen in front of him, it leaned forward and touched a clammy forehead to his.

His limbs turned to jelly, images swirling before him and taking the place of the creature: an empty warehouse, the dark gleam of vampire claws, the searing energy wave pressing him into the wall, until he’d lost all sense of where he was.

One was in focus, rising above the others: Helen lying in a dim hall in a pool of her own blood, her eyes blank and staring upward. Nikola’s chest seized up with panic again and he stumbled backward, trying to get away, but his legs weren’t moving right and he fell sideways onto the sand. He was dimly aware that someone was stooping over him.

Something ghosted over his hand, running along his claws almost tenderly. Pain blossomed in his chest.

“I’ll see you later, Nikola,” said Helen’s voice, before everything faded away.


	3. Divides

Helen made it back to the car without having to come up with any cover stories, believable or otherwise. (She would have hated to use the X-Files one herself after what she had said to Nikola.) She dug around in the back of the car and slung the bag containing their underwater drone equipment over her shoulder before heading back up the coast, walking briskly. It was a fine day; if not for the rather gruesome nature of their errand, she would have considered this a pleasant outing. And, like herself, Nikola loved mysteries and puzzles; if anything could help distract him, it would be a problem to solve.

As she approached the place where she had left him, her eyes narrowed. He wasn’t standing on the beach where he was supposed to be. Just barely, she could make out a figure over on the grass, facing away from the water. Was that him? Honestly, if he’d shirked his guard duties…

She jogged forward until the figure came into clear view. Her eyes widened.

It wasn’t Nikola. It was shorter than he was and somehow even more wiry, with a strange pattern of light dots and swirls on its back. But what it was bending over was of more immediate concern to Helen.

“Nikola!” she shouted. It looked like he was unconscious, though from this distance she couldn’t tell. The creature’s webbed hand was splayed over his temple and forehead. More patterns on the side of its hand glowed a bright blue-green, the light pulsing gently against Nikola’s face.

She drew her gun, cursing the fact that she hadn’t brought her stunner on vacation. Not that she would have wanted to use it while the creature was still connected to Nikola, not knowing what his condition was at the moment. Its head whipped around when she came nearer, its inky black eyes staring at her coldly.

“Move away from him,” Helen ordered.

It remained where it was. She blinked, disoriented; for a moment she could have sworn she saw a man in a long black coat kneeling where the creature was, his face in shadow. But then she focused, and the creature flickered back into view.

Nikola’s face was drawn and pained, even though his eyes were still closed. Her stomach twisted.

“Move.” Helen gestured with her gun. “Now.”

But it still didn’t yield, and the lights only shone brighter. She fired a warning shot into the air, carrying sound be damned.

The creature emitted a high-pitched, whistling keen and shrank back, finally letting go of Nikola. Then it ran towards the water’s edge. Helen wouldn’t have called it  _ fast, _ but she was still far enough away that it was in the sea before she could catch up. It kicked off and dove under the surface, and was out of sight.

Cursing under her breath, Helen shrugged off the bag and knelt in the sand, hurriedly pulling out one of Henry’s underwater drones. She flicked a few switches and set it down in the water, where it floated and bobbed gently with the lapping waves. Then she tugged out the remote control and switched on one of his latest additions: a sort of autopilot that would detect what she needed it to follow and pursue at a safe distance. This was exactly the sort of situation it had been made for, and she only hoped that it worked as well as Henry and Nikola promised it would.

With that thought she dropped the remote and ran over to Nikola, still lying motionless on his side where the creature had left him. There was blood on his jacket and waistcoat, dripping onto the grass. Helen was looking for a weapon before she realized the weapon was Nikola himself: his arm was bent up, his fingers clustered together, and his own claws had been driven into his heart.

“Bloody hell,” she breathed, before taking hold of his wrist and pulling his claws out as smoothly as she could. His eyes flew open immediately and he sucked in a great breath of air.

The instant he saw Helen, he scrambled back with a strangled yelp. At first she thought it was just a belated reaction from being attacked earlier, but he kept edging away with unmistakable fear.

He was looking at  _ her  _ like that _ ,  _ as though he didn’t know her at all. Seeing that on her oldest, dearest friend… Helen felt like she’d been kicked in the gut. Fighting to maintain a neutral expression, she held her hands up in the air.

“It’s alright,” she said. “It’s me.”

Uncertainty flitted across Nikola’s face. He stopped moving away from her, but he didn’t get any closer, either. “Prove it.”

Helen’s brow furrowed, but she kept her tone as light as she could. “You hate Thomas Edison with the burning intensity of a thousand suns.”

Nikola snorted, and she thought he relaxed slightly. “Everyone knows that.”

“Well, until you tell me whom I could possibly be other than myself, it’ll be difficult for me to convince you.”

“Talking in circles is very Helen-ish,” Nikola muttered, apparently to himself, then: “Kiss me?”

Helen rolled her eyes. “Oh, please.”

“Chalk another point up for authentic Helen. Seriously, though, please?” He was giving her an odd, earnest look, and was clearly still quite shaken by whatever that creature had done to him. Helen considered the way he’d looked at her earlier, and, making certain to keep her movements slow, she leaned forward and pressed her lips gently against his.

She was reminded of the first time she had ever kissed him; he’d been so unsure back then, almost shy really, and he had kissed her like he thought he was dreaming. It was a little like that now, except this time he was on edge, waiting to see if he would wake up.

A few seconds later, he whimpered softly and broke the kiss, his head falling forward to rest his forehead on hers. “Helen,” he whispered. “Sorry, I needed to be sure.”

Helen pulled back, laying a hand on his cheek. “Be sure of what? What happened? What was that creature?”

Nikola had lifted his hand, claws still extended and dripping with his own blood, and was staring at it. His eyes had gone rather vacant, but he shook his head to clear it and glanced back at her. “I wish I knew. It – she? – looked like you, talked like you, the whole nine yards.”

“Gracious, Nikola, I hope I’ve aged better than that,” Helen said in an attempt to lighten the mood, thinking of the small wrinkled creature who had darted into the sea. “Suffice to say that I saw something very different.”

Nikola’s eyebrows drew together. “So, what, it can change shape? Mess with people’s heads? Or…” He looked down at his claws again, swallowing. Helen couldn’t figure out why he kept doing that, but she didn’t like the expression that had just come over him.

“Some form of mental manipulation, perhaps,” she said, in as soothing a voice as she could muster.

“Maybe,” Nikola said almost inaudibly. He had stopped looking at her altogether, focused intently on his hand; it reminded Helen of watching him try to solve a particularly difficult equation.

An alarm bell began to ring in the back of her mind. Even more unsettling was the fact that she didn’t know  _ why. _ The creature was gone, and Nikola was safe. But he didn’t seem himself. What exactly had that creature done to him?

“Do you remember anything?” she tried, then gestured at his hand. “It looked like you were trying to defend yourself, so you must have seen through the disguise, even if only briefly.”

“Oh. Yes, you’re right,” said Nikola. “Brilliant as ever.” He flashed an absent grin in her general direction, but it was so hollow that Helen’s stomach dropped out from under her. She had to stifle the impulse to grab him and get them both far away from here as quickly as she could.

He closed his eyes, concentrating. “I did see it,” he said slowly. “I mean, the not-you version. It was… Well, I think, it was… kind of…” His voice kept getting quieter and quieter, before he trailed off entirely.

His body went suddenly limp, a little exhale escaping him before he collapsed. Helen caught him, holding him up by his arms. 

“Nikola?” She shook him lightly. “Nikola, can you hear me?” Worry clogged her throat.

Abruptly, his eyes snapped open. He brushed off Helen’s hands without a word, jumped up, and strode to the water’s edge.

“Nikola, what are you doing?” Helen called, pushing herself to her feet and going after him. He didn’t answer. To her shock, he took a step forward into the water. “Nikola!” By the time she made it to him, he was already knee-deep in the waves.

“Nikola, what the hell – ” She caught his arm, and he wrenched it out of her grip. His face was blank, his eyes empty and fixed on the water. Another few steps put them both waist-deep. It didn’t seem like he was going to stop before it swallowed them both completely. And while Nikola could certainly survive indefinitely in the ocean, if he got too much farther, Helen wouldn’t be able to follow.

Gritting her teeth, Helen threw her arms around him and hauled him back. At least, she tried to – it was hardly easy going, trying to drag a resolute vampire out of deepening water.

Nikola hissed, and her blood ran cold. He didn’t even  _ recognize  _ her.

That was bad enough, but what if it was worse? What if… Helen thought of Adam, and swallowed, and pushed it out of her mind. Impossible. Adam would no doubt have been monologuing by now. No, she had seen that abnormal doing something to Nikola while he was unconscious. It had to be that. And it had to be reversible. She refused to let this happen again.

Helen pulled harder, water sloshing around her knees. A large wave smashed into both of them and Helen lost her grip, stumbling and falling backward. She caught herself on her hands and landed in the shallows.

When she looked up, Nikola was standing over her, but it was him again, her Nikola, looking at her like the sun and stars combined. Helen’s breath caught from sheer relief.

He also looked confused. “Helen?” he asked, glancing around with a frown. “What just happened?”

Helen got to her feet, taking the last few steps onto dry land. “I should be asking you the same thing. Mind telling me why you just tried to walk into the sea like you grew gills while I wasn’t looking?”

“I don’t know,” he said unsteadily. “Are you alright?” His hand stretched out but fell to his side when she took a step back.

“I’m fine,” Helen lied. Nikola’s brief episode of unrecognition had shaken her more than she cared to admit. “What about you?”

“I don’t know,” he said again, and lifted his hand to his eyes once more. His claws were still extended, and still bloody. His eyes went distant, tracking the motion as a single drop of blood collected on one nail and fell into the sea. It dissipated immediately, but he kept watching the place where it had been, brows knit together in concentration.

Helen watched this uneasily. She couldn’t shake the impression that his behavior was somehow linked to this new preoccupation, even if she couldn’t fathom how. But when he was looking at his hand or claws, it seemed as though he had been mesmerized.

“Nikola,” she said. When he didn’t look up, she repeated herself in a louder tone. His head snapped up and his eyes focused a little.

“Helen?”

“Alright,” she said, trying to steady herself. “You said it masqueraded as me. Don’t try to picture its other form, but can you remember anything it said while it was doing that, anything it did…?”

“Well,” Nikola hedged. “I’m not… one hundred percent sure what happened.”

“It’s alright. Just walk me through everything you remember.”

Nikola glanced away from her, his hands twisting together. “See, the thing is I don’t know if, ah, what I saw was what actually happened.”

Helen blinked. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean,” he said, frustration seeping into his voice, “that I’m a very unreliable witness right now. Shouldn’t you be checking your – your drone or something?”

“The drone can take care of itself.” Helen continued gazing steadily at him. “Are you saying that the creature  _ didn’t  _ take my form?”

“I don’t  _ know!” _ he snapped. Her eyebrows shot up.

His voice grew increasingly wild. “Helen, I… I don’t even know where I am half the time, let alone what some random sea beastie looked like. I can’t trust anything I see, or anyone, not even you – ” It broke on the last word. Then he looked back at his hand again, and another drop of blood slid off.

At that moment, terrible realization seemed to dawn. His eyes went wide with pure terror. His mouth opened, but all that came out was a ragged choking sound.

The alarms in Helen’s mind were shrieking now, and she was moving closer to Nikola, her hand outstretched. “Nikola, what is it?” she asked, trying and failing to keep her voice level. “Tell me.”

He met her eyes. The fear and anguish she saw there made Helen freeze, whatever she had been about to say sticking in her throat. His claws finally slid back into his hand, and he clenched it hard.

His mouth trembled. “I’m sorry, Helen.”

“ _ Nikola  _ – ”

“I love you,” he whispered, and before Helen could move or say a word, he vanished.

“Nikola!” she shouted after him. “Nikola!” But his vampiric speed would have already carried him out of earshot.

He was gone.


	4. Currents

Nikola fled from his sickening realization and ran, flashing past fields and forests and mountains and lakes. He must have left Italy at some point, but his surroundings were lost on him, his thoughts sunk into a mire. At last his strength, already pushed to the breaking point, ran out.

His legs wobbled and gave out. While he hadn’t been running at top speed, he was still going fast enough that his momentum carried him forward, his foot catching on a rock and sending him tumbling head over heels until he struck a half-dead tree trunk, his entire left side crunching unpleasantly on impact.

Nikola lay unmoving for an indeterminate period, groaning softly. It took longer to heal than it should have, and when everything had knit itself back together again, his entire body was limp and drained.

Experimentally, he tried lifting an arm, only for it to flop back to the ground lifelessly.

“Nice.” His voice wheezed. The world still spun in circles, but he didn't want to close his eyes, because if he did, he would see Helen.

The shock and pain on her face as he sped off  _ should _ have been the worst part of what had just happened. But no, it was everything that came before. The worry, the confusion, the brave face she was so good at putting on. That was the worst part, because he had seen it all before.

Short temper. Paranoia. Blackouts. That was how it had started with John, all those years ago at Oxford. Something about seeing that blood on his hands had kick-started the memories, slotting them into place in his head.

It would explain why he had seen a different creature than Helen had: John had had hallucinations too. For all he knew, that creature was perfectly ordinary, no malevolent mind powers to speak of. It would explain why he'd snapped at her, surprising even himself with his vehemence, and why he couldn't shake the fear that he was still in the virtual reality no matter how many times he verified it and tried to convince himself. It would explain why he'd lost consciousness and woken up with Helen upset and confused in front of him. God, he could have hurt her while he was out, he could have...

His mind helpfully supplied him with images of exactly what could have happened, and his stomach gave a violent lurch. He managed to lean to the side just in time to throw up.

Back in his SCIU facility, he had gone through the rift when he had saved Henry. They had no idea what kinds of creatures lived in that realm; who was to say he hadn't picked up a nasty little stowaway who worked to the same effect that John's energy being did? Or maybe there was still some fragment of Adam's consciousness left within him. He'd hidden from them before, after all.

Nikola had to wonder if it was a coincidence that a man showed up dead the same day they had arrived. Had  _ he  _ done that? He had drifted off to sleep for perhaps a half hour while Helen was asleep. Or at least, he thought he had. Enough time for a vampire to run down to the coast, kill someone –  _ blood loss,  _ he thought with another lurch – and get back.

Maybe that creature had been a witness, not a killer; he couldn't blame it for attacking him at that rate, not when it had seen what he was capable of.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “That’s no fitting end for a good vintage,” he muttered weakly. His legs were trembling, but he managed to get up, stumble a few steps away, and take note of his surroundings.

He was in the mountains, right on the treeline, and a chill wind was making itself known. Shivering, Nikola wrapped his arms around himself, and looked down into the valleys around him.

All the carefully constructed phrases and number combinations he had kept running through his head to help him deal with the Adam situation had shattered into bits during his frenetic journey here. A voice in his head was screaming that everything in the world was wrong, wrong,  _ wrong,  _ and between that and everything else that had happened, his thoughts was almost as battered as his body had been. At least things couldn’t get any worse, right?

His heart sank as he looked around. He knew this place. On his heedless rush away from Helen, he had unconsciously looped around right to Austria. A city lay below him and some distance off, lights glittering in the deepening dusk. Salzburg, if he wasn't mistaken. Nikola carefully avoided turning to look east. He wasn't sure if he could see Vienna from this distance with night already falling, but a glimpse of that would be more than he could bear.

The wind picked up, biting right through his waistcoat and jacket, now stained dark reddish brown with dried blood. As he stood there looking down into the valley, an unfamiliar, desolate loneliness overcame him. He had gotten spoiled lately, calling the Sanctuary his home. There he had a stocked wine cellar and a lab all to himself, not  _ entirely _ horrible company in the form of the more tolerable children, and the privilege of spending his days and nights near Helen.

_Helen._ There was a sharp, hollow ache in his chest, and his eyes burned. All he wanted right now was her.

Of course he could never see her again, not if he was right about what was happening to him. He would send a message, let her know that creature wasn't to blame for any deaths, and maybe say a better goodbye than he'd managed earlier.

But first, he needed proof. He couldn't trust his own mind worth a damn right now, thanks to Adam; there was still a possibility, however slim, that he was wrong. Nikola certainly wasn't going to condemn himself to an eternity without Helen without some evidence. At least whatever else he was unsure of right now (which was, well, pretty much everything), he knew one thing: he was still a scientist.

He needed access to a decent lab, and somewhere safe and contained, where he could lock himself up and keep himself from hurting anyone. He also needed their old notes on John's condition, not to mention whatever small amounts of research had been done on the rift and what Adam had done to him. It might also be useful to have a second (or third) opinion on any data he dug up, since he was kind of unreliable at the moment.

And lastly, it needed to be away from Helen; he couldn't give her any false hope, only to hurt her just like John had. He couldn’t do that to her. He  _ wouldn’t.  _

Unfortunately, there was only one place he could go for everything he needed. The odds of Helen being there were low: not low enough for Nikola’s taste, but still, it was the best option he had right now. He had to get somewhere safe before he had another blackout.

Still shaky, Nikola slipped and slid down the slope until he had reached a tree that provided a bit of shelter from the wind. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his cell phone.

Grimacing, he noticed that Helen had left four voicemail messages and a great many more missed calls. She’d texted him, too, but right now he didn’t think reading or listening to any of her messages was a great idea.

Even so, he didn't like the thought of leaving her without  _ any  _ idea of what was going on. So he hit the reply button, and then stood there for several minutes trying to figure out what to say.

(There was a small part of himself that wished he would have left in a slightly less dramatic fashion; he could have left her a more detailed message then, and maybe avoided causing her worry. But this was for the best. If he had waited, who knew what he could have done to her before he left?)

_ Helen,  _ he eventually typed, then erased it.

_ Helen,  _ he retyped.  _ I might be responsible for  _ – He erased that too, sighing.

_ Helen, I'm fine. Have to test out a few theories.  _ He hesitated.  _ I may not be able to come back. Will explain everything later, just need time. Don't come looking for me. _

He was on the verge of sending it when he stopped and added a final note.

_ Be safe. I love you. _

If he  _ could _ go back, Helen was going to kill him as soon as he did for sending that while telling her she might not ever see him again. But if he was wrong, if he could just be around her again, she could shoot him as many times as she wanted; Nikola would be so glad he wouldn't even feel it.

After he sent that to Helen, he dialed another number.

Henry answered on the second ring. “Hey, man, what's up? I thought you were with the doc.”

“Your girlfriend,” Nikola said without preamble. “What's-her-name. Wolf-Girl. Eileen.”

“Erika,” Henry corrected, audibly rolling his eyes.

“Is she around and willing to travel?”

“She’s here, I can ask.” Henry sounded suspicious. “Why, you got a sudden craving to be rude to her in person?”

“I need her help. Yours too. And you can't breathe a word to Helen.” Nikola didn't entirely make it through her name. He coughed, trying to cover his slip-up.

Henry had gone quiet. “Are you ok?”

“No.” Nikola's jaw set. “Come to the new Venetian Sanctuary. I'll explain everything in person.”

 

Helen shouted until her voice was hoarse, even though she knew Nikola would almost certainly be far out of range. Then she tried calling him on her cell phone. Of course he didn’t answer, and Helen hung up instead of leaving a message. She could do that later if he hadn’t come back by then, but right now she was rather shaken, and she honestly had no idea what to say to him.

_ You bloody over-theatrical idiot  _ was up there on the list. But more than anything, she wanted to ask him  _ why.  _ Those final words had been a goodbye. What could possibly be so terrible that he would immediately exile himself away from her like that? Helen blinked and swallowed, and set her shoulders.

She would try calling back in a little while. For now, there was nothing to do but let him go. Trying to ignore the thick lump in her throat, Helen knelt down and picked up the underwater drone remote, clicking to cycle through the surveillance equipment attached.

It was still following the target she had set it on. Henry had built in some Praxian technology to enhance the picture quality, but it was deep enough now that the screen was little more than a mass of murky blue-black. On the off chance that the creature was warm-blooded, Helen turned on the thermal sensors, but there was nothing there either. She switched over to sonar.

Under the surface, the sea was teeming with activity. Helen filtered out everything but sounds from the target, and watched as the drone studiously followed the blinking red dot on the edge of the screen. It was moving away from the coast and deeper into the sea, farther away from people.

Helen was fairly sure she had frightened it badly with that gunshot, which made her think it wouldn’t be coming out of the sea near this place any time soon. It was odd, she thought: it had overwhelmed Nikola quite easily, yet it ran off as soon as she fired on it. Her gun was certainly much less deadly than Nikola could be. And… She frowned. There was something else about the encounter that had been important, she knew that, but it slipped out of her reach when she tried to remember it.

Helen looked back at the sea with growing unease. She had been doing this long enough to recognize memory manipulation when she saw it. Whatever that creature was, it not only had the ability to alter memories, but also to do it from a distance.

How long had it been with Nikola? If it had erased some of her memories just by looking at her, what could it have done to him, up close and with a greater amount of time? Could that be the reason he had taken off, as a result of some kind of unconscious suggestion it had planted? He had tried to go in the sea when he had blacked out. What if it wanted him to follow it?

The more Helen thought about it, the more concerned she grew for Nikola. That creature wanted him for something _ ,  _ of that she was certain. He might have played right into its hands.

She tried calling him again, but once again there was no answer. This time she left a (rather stiff) message warning him to be on the lookout, and for the love of God come back here where she could keep an eye on him. Then she thought it best to hang up, since she didn’t think her voice was going to hold out for much longer. Damn that man.

It didn’t seem worthwhile to stay there any longer, so Helen packed up her equipment and headed back to the car. She would go back to the villa and plug in the data the drone had picked up to her computers. Perhaps she could extrapolate a pattern in its movements and predict where it might come out next. Also, she wanted to run all her observations (at least the ones she could remember, she thought sourly) through her database and see if there were any pings. Somewhere in Sanctuary history or the Praxian database there had to be a record that would tell her what this creature was.

 

Night was just beginning to set in when Helen lifted her head from the computer. She had lost herself in her work, and all she had to show for it was a map with a variety of paths and routes marked in various colors and notes scribbled all over it, and altogether too many possibilities from the database. It seemed as if half the abnormals they encountered had or potentially had mental manipulation powers. She was doubting her previous assurance that it must have been sighted and documented at some point.

She had called Nikola several more times, throwing herself more vehemently into her work every time he didn’t pick up. She texted him as well, much good it did.

He would come back, she reminded herself. He always did. (He had to.)

Her last text blinked unsent on her phone, simple and far more vulnerable than Helen would ever allow herself to be:  _ Please come home.  _ Helen ignored it and stood abruptly, pushing herself back from the computer. A break, that was what she needed. On her way out of the lab, she caught sight of one of Nikola’s ubiquitous wine glasses standing forgotten on the desk farthest from the computers.

Helen stopped walking.

She closed her eyes, stinging with unshed tears. “Damn him,” she said unevenly. Whirling, she turned around and snatched her phone, unlocking it and pressing Send before she could talk herself out of it or even think about it. Her hands were shaking when she put the phone down.

She was still bent over it, breathing hard, when she heard a beeping noise from behind her. Turning, she saw the remote for the underwater drone, blinking insistently at her.

Helen would have been lying if she pretended she wasn’t glad of the distraction. She went over and checked the screen. Earlier, she had set it to notify her if there were any major changes in the readings it was getting. Sonar looked the same, so she flipped over to the camera.

Her breath drew in. The patterns on the creature’s back and arms were glowing in the pitch-black depths. She could see another dark shape half-blocking it: large, too, perhaps a six-gill shark. The glow brightened and the shark fell back slowly, before swimming off.

The creature Helen was tracking turned around, displaying more patterns on the front of its body and giving her a good look at it.

Immediately, she knew what she had forgotten about the run-in earlier, and why she hadn’t recognized the obvious anatomical similarities on first glimpse. Now that she had her first view of the creature through a camera, the protective barriers of distance and technology stood between her and its defensive mechanism. Its  _ only  _ defensive mechanism.

“Bloody hell,” she said, and then took a step back on instinct. Something had struck the drone, sending it spinning wildly away. She caught a brief sight of the shark, angled towards the camera and poised to ram it again, and the patterns on the creature glowing harshly bright. Another blow and the camera feed fizzled out.

Defending itself, or making sure she couldn’t follow its movements so it could prepare for another attack? Helen wasn’t sure if she was in any danger; she speculated that it wouldn’t be able to track her all the way back here. Still, it couldn’t hurt to pull in reinforcements. This would be a task for an entire Sanctuary team, and a well-equipped one at that. Though with Amatheia’s team so busy –

Helen froze. Her phone call with Amatheia… One thing she’d said, innocuous at the time, sprang back into her mind with a jolt, now with entirely new implications.

“Bloody  _ hell,”  _ she said again, and started running. She had to get to the Venetian Sanctuary, and fast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I promise Nikola + the energy creature plot developments were planned out long before they were discussed in the Sanctuary Discord server. XD)


	5. Under the Canals

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to fabledshadow and tinknevertalks on Tumblr for helping out with a few things on this chapter <3
> 
> Note: Contains some anxiety-fueled avoidance of eating (in the context of vampiric blood drinking, but I figured a warning wouldn't hurt just in case.)

Traveling on the underground Praxian railway system at faster-than-airplane speeds wasn’t the most pleasant experience for a stomach at the best of times. It was even less fun for someone who happened to be pregnant.

Henry kept patting Erika’s back as comfortingly as he could while she hurled into the helpfully-provided receptacle. After she finished, the doors slid open and let them into what he was determined to call the “docking bay” of the new Sanctuary layout. (Even if Will had said “That’s a little too Star Wars, don’t you think?” when he suggested it)

To be fair, it wasn’t quite as impressive as the title suggested. It was really more like a small underground subway stop, with room for a couple of the railway spheres to park and turn around, and a passage that led off to the main Sanctuary. But Henry maintained his position in regards to the name, because what other opportunities was he going to get to use a cool name like that?

Nikola met them as they stepped onto the landing, Henry giving a still-green Erika a hand down. Her eyes narrowed when she looked at him. At first Henry thought she was just mad at him for dragging them all the way out here, but then he turned and saw Tesla for himself.

“Dude, you look like hell.”

_ Bedraggled  _ was not a word Henry would usually have applied to Nikola, but at the moment it fit. His suit was damp and covered in rust-colored blood stains, and his hair was plastered to his forehead in a way that made it clear he’d been dripping wet less than an hour ago. His shoes even squelched.

“Did you swim through the lagoon on your way down here?” Henry asked, still gaping.

“Yes, actually.” Nikola sounded pretty rough, and Henry wondered if something had happened between him and Magnus. He looked rough, too. On closer inspection, his skin had an unhealthy grayish tinge. Though he didn’t have his claws and fangs out, his eyes had half-turned a deep red, which was both confusing and kind of unsettling. “The entrance by land is in the middle of the city.”

“So?”

“So it’s surrounded by people, do I have to spell it out for you?” Nikola snapped, before continuing with patronizing slowness, “Hungry vampire plus big crowd equals bad.”

It was only then that Henry noticed the shimmering silver bands wrapped tightly around his wrists. Nikola held up his hands with a hollow, bitter smile. “Helen would kill me if I hurt one of you. Now now, enough chatting; let’s get to work.” He turned and started off, the doors sliding open in front of him.

That wasn’t creepy at  _ all.  _ Exchanging a troubled glance, Henry and Erika followed him. He seemed to be favoring one leg, and she frowned. “Are you hurt?”

“Hmm? Oh, I took a bad step in the mountains after I called you. It’s only half-healed."

“I thought vampire rejuvenative abilities worked more quickly than that,” said Erika with a glance at Henry, who shrugged in agreement.

“Yes, well.” Nikola grimaced. “Let’s just say that covering a thousand miles on an empty stomach plays hell with the body.” Seeing their blank looks, he sighed. “Weren’t you kids paying attention in history class? Even vampires don’t have  _ unlimited  _ energy reserves. How did you think they got wiped out if they were totally invincible? Come on, it’s not that hard. I used up everything I had, and I need blood before I can heal anything else now.” His eyes seemed to shine an even deeper, hungrier red than before, nearly burning in the dim hallway.

Well, that would explain the reluctance to hang out in heavily populated areas. “You have that plasma stuff, right?” Henry said, looking uneasily at Tesla and fighting down a very instinctual urge to get far away from those eyes. Not that he actually believed he would hurt either of them, but Henry had played enough survival horror games to know an obvious danger sign when he saw it.

“Sure. But – it’s close enough to blood, and, ah, I don’t know... I’m trying not to, to set anything off.” Whatever that meant. Henry glanced at Erika again, puzzled.

His hands flexed. “I can last a few more days, anyway. You brought the files I asked for?”

Erika nodded, flashing a thumb drive. “They’re all here. I’ve studied what I can, but I’m afraid you’ll have to tell me what you’re looking for.”

“Oh, trust me.” His face was grim. “I know exactly what I’m looking for.” His injured leg faltered, and he stumbled sideways before Henry darted in and slid an arm around his shoulders, supporting him.

“Thank you, Henry,” he muttered, begrudgingly. The Scary Eyes were half-closed, and he just looked like an exhausted version of himself now.

“You, um, don’t look like you’re doing so good,” Henry ventured. “Do you wanna like, lie down or something before we start?”

Nikola shook his head. “No, we have to be as quick as possible and notify Helen of the results. Just in case I’m wrong.”

To Henry, this made about as much sense as the ending of Lost, but he seized the opportunity to ask one of the questions at the forefront of his mind. “Why isn’t Magnus here, anyway, and what’s the deal with the swearing us to secrecy thing? She’s gonna be furious at you.”

“Oh, if I know Helen, she already is.”

 

Glancing around to make sure she wasn’t being watched, Helen ducked down an alley and opened the farthest door. It led to another door, and then an elevator she activated with her thumb print. With a clang, the elevator began descending. On one side, a glass panel showed moonlight playing strangely through the canal water, before that too was swallowed up by the descent.

A little while later, the elevator doors slid open, and Helen stepped out into the entrance hall of the Venetian Sanctuary.

Much like the city above, wide canals meant for a variety of aquatic abnormals ran smoothly alongside dark-paneled walkways for dry-landers such as herself. On the lowest levels, the majority of the residential area was completely submersed.

Amatheia was floating in the ocean canal, waiting for her. (As a half-mermaid, she could adapt to any of the environments within her Sanctuary, but she had told Helen she preferred the saltiness of the ocean water.)

“Good evening, Dr. Magnus,” she said, pushing her glasses up her nose: a nervous tic, but to her credit, Helen’s phone call would have disturbed even the most experienced of Sanctuary leaders.

“Good evening,” Helen greeted. “I’m sorry for disturbing you at this hour.”

She shook her head. “It’s no problem. You’re right, it’s best to get the situation resolved as soon as possible. Follow me?”

Helen nodded and hurried along behind her on the walkway as she turned, splashing, and swam off through the canal, her shimmering golden tail undulating. Helen’s footsteps seemed harsh and loud in comparison, particularly when her shoes clacked against the dark green tiles inlaid here and there.

After a while, they reached the section devoted to land abnormals, which contained only a few small rooms and cells. Even those could be converted to water tanks if necessary, as the whole Sanctuary had been designed primarily for water-dwellers.

Amatheia stopped, her head and shoulders coming out of the water. She took her glasses off and wiped them with a long-suffering look, while gesturing to the largest cell. “In there. My team was lucky to have come away in one piece; we had quite a struggle with it.”

Helen peered into the cell. A miniature winter landscape met her eyes: snow piled high on the floor, a leafless tree, and a few rocks. A large creature was sleeping on top of one of them.

“A yeti,” she said, and glanced over her shoulder at Amatheia, who nodded. “And you said it had trouble adjusting to the artificial climate?”

“Yes. But that’s expected, since it’s quite warm here. Not very mountain range-ish,” she tacked on with an awkward smile.

Helen smiled too, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Yet when you called me earlier, I heard you giving orders to increase the temperature.”

Amatheia’s eyes unfocused slightly before she shrugged. “I suppose we were trying to refine the environment.”

“Are you certain?” Helen watched her closely. “Try and remember as much as you can.”

Amatheia frowned, her expression going blank again. “Now that you mention it… I do remember being surprised at how high we had to set it. From what I know of – of yetis, I had expected freezing temperatures. Although now that I see the gauge again, it seems the temperature is only a few degrees above that. I don’t know why I thought it was higher, to be honest...” She looked troubled, as if she couldn’t quite remember something important.

Helen pursed her lips. “Could you take me to your office?”

“Of course.”

 

Nikola missed his Sanctuary. Helen kept a full cellar of wine for him there, and while the mermaid seemed nice and had asked him somewhat flusteredly about his inventions (fans; he just couldn’t get away from them, he preened), she clearly had a few things to learn about the proper way to supply a Sanctuary.

He had asked her to let him use a secure laboratory and lock him out of the door controls. The door had been left open, and all the necessary equipment carted inside. Nikola wandered around for a while, inspecting it. It looked like he had everything he needed, so Erika gave him the flashdrive, Henry wished him luck, and they disappeared to go to work in a different lab. With a sigh, he watched the door seal shut behind them.

Depressing as it was to be shut in without even a decent drop for his parched mouth, he felt a wave of relief as the door locked in place. There. Now he couldn’t get out and he couldn’t hurt anyone, no matter what happened.

The relief lasted all of five seconds before he looked into a corner and saw Nigel Griffin watching him.

Nikola jerked so hard he knocked an empty beaker off the table. It shattered at his feet, though he barely heard it over the sudden thundering of his heart.

“Hullo, Nikola,” said Nigel.

 

“Are you working with Mr. Tesla on this?” Amatheia had an unusual pink tinge in her cheeks, and she was adjusting her glasses more than strictly necessary. (Like most of the younger scientists in the Sanctuary network, she held Nikola in a sort of star-struck admiration, which would doubtless wear down once she spent enough time around him.)

Helen froze. “What?”

Amatheia was giving her a curious look. “He’s working in the laboratory on the third level. I assumed you were here together.”

“It’s rather up in the air at the moment,” Helen said automatically, in a cloud of shock and confusion. He was  _ here?  _ Relief spread through her; he was safe, he hadn’t run to the farthest corners of the earth as he once had. But what could he be doing? She shook her head. If he was in the throes of science, he wouldn’t be going anywhere soon. She could find him later, and she had pressing business to attend to first. “Could you… show me the surveillance cameras, please?”

“Of course. Have a seat.” Amatheia waved Helen towards an overstuffed chair and touched a device near her ear. Nikola and Henry had whipped it up after consulting with her and Sally; as Helen understood it, it connected her telepathically to the computer system. Her powers weren’t as strong as Sally’s, though, so it only worked within the Sanctuary.

The security feeds popped up on the screen in front of Helen. With her eyes closed, Amatheia tilted her head and flicked through them until they had reached the corridor containing the creature pretending to be a yeti. At least, if Helen was correct about the creature’s true identity. (She was very rarely wrong in such matters.)

Amatheia made a small noise of surprise as the cell displays came up. “Someone’s turned the temperature up.” She straightened and aimed to swim back out to the residential level, but Helen stopped her with a raised hand.

“Wait,” she said. “Check the logs.”

There was a pause, as Amatheia frowned and the artificial climate records flickered across the screen. “It hasn’t been changed since we set it up, but the temperature was near freezing, and now it’s not. I don’t understand.”

“I do.” Helen smiled thinly. “That creature is not what it appears to be.” She peered at the screen. Through the camera, she saw that what had appeared to them earlier as an arctic tundra was in fact a tank of water, still and wave-less in the quiet of the Sanctuary.

She turned to Amatheia. “Are you familiar with the Magoi?”

 

“What the hell?” Nikola managed.

Nigel’s hands were in his pockets, and he sauntered towards Nikola, glancing around. “Things have changed since our day, eh Nikola? I remember when you would have killed a man for a laboratory like this.”

Nikola took a step back, his hands trembling. Nigel only stared at him.

“You’re not real,” choked Nikola. “It wasn’t the creature. I  _ am  _ – I’m – ”

“You’re not losing it,” Nigel assured him.

“Oh yes, talking to dead people is  _ totally  _ normal.”

Nigel shrugged. “You faked your death. Why couldn’t I do the same?”

“Then what are you doing  _ here?”  _ Nikola snapped. “Just gallivanting around on vacation? You’re telling me you left your own granddaughter on her own, forced to steal to survive, and then – No. You can’t be real.”

“For someone who claims to hate people, you have a high enough opinion of some of us.”

“The rare few good ones,” Nikola said, voice thick. “Helen. Wolf-boy. You.”

Nigel smiled a strange, satisfied smile. “And yourself?”

An odd thing was happening inside his head. Most of his awareness was sunk into a fog, much like when he’d thought he’d seen Helen right before the creature had attacked him on the beach. But then, he had been expecting her; nothing had seemed wrong until he was already in too deep. Now, though… Seeing Nigel, long-dead and far away, was  _ impossible. _ It set off something in the part of his mind that was torturously fixed on whether or not he was in reality, the part had been endlessly running and checking and rechecking it for the last month.

And now, impossibly, that corner of his mind was clear of the fog, fitting pieces together. There: Nigel never moved his head like that. The smile was far too bitter. And his accent was just slightly wrong. Along with Helen, Nigel had been his best friend in the world. Nikola didn’t forget details like that. If he was really hallucinating, wouldn’t he be hallucinating  _ right? _

“Oh, please.” Nikola barely managed a proper sneer. “What do you think?”

Nigel snorted, then came closer. “I need your help. They’ve got me locked up in here – these Sanctuary people aren’t nearly as benevolent as they want you to think.”

“Insulting Helen is hardly the way to win my allegiance.”

He shook his head. “It’s not Helen. She doesn’t know. We have to escape, and then we can contact her. Come on, Nik, help me out.”

“I can’t open the door,” said Nikola. His entire body was shaking, but his head felt clearer than it had since he’d left Helen on the beach. If he was right –

“Oh, come on. You couldn’t open that door if you  _ really  _ wanted to?”

Nikola realized he had backed up close to the lab computers. His heart thudded in his chest, a wave of unabashed terror rolling over him at being so near to them, but he somehow swallowed it down.

“You’re right, I could,” he admitted, continuing to edge over, closer to where the computers were plugged in. He was too worn down to generate any power himself, and while this looked like a fairly heavy duty setup, he would doubtless fry it completely if he tapped into main Sanctuary power through it. Hopefully Ariel’s science crush on him extended to tolerance for property damage.

Nigel continued stepping closer.

“Want to know something else?” Nikola leaned in, his voice sinking into a hiss. “I’m tired of people messing with my head.”

Then he slammed his hands back, electricity coursing and crackling through his fingers, spreading to his entire body. Quickly, he grabbed Nigel’s arm and let it pour through them both. There were sparks behind him and everything in the room went dead, but he already had as much as he needed.

To his mingled horror and relief, the image of Nigel fizzled out, replaced by the same creature he had seen before on the beach. Relief won out, suffusing Nikola until he was almost dizzy. These creatures  _ did  _ have mental powers. He hadn’t hallucinated it all. He wasn’t turning into John.

The creature emitted a gurgling scream, its skin smoking where he was touching it. Still thinking of Helen, Nikola let the current fade. It hadn’t been as strong as he could usually manage, but at least it seemed to have incapacitated the creature.

Then again, maybe this hadn’t been his best idea ever – he was feeling pretty singed himself. His body tingled painfully and his head throbbed. The creature was snarling at him, so he aimed for the door, but he only managed a couple of steps before his legs folded underneath him.

He dropped to his knees, the room spinning around him as he seized a nearby table leg and attempted to get back up. At first he thought it was working: his wobbly legs began to straighten and he ascended slightly, before another wave of disorientation hit him like a truck. He crumpled to the floor. Blood, he thought distantly. He needed blood. Where was his plasma supplement? A quick drink of that, and then…

His limbs had gone numb, his vision dimming. His body was trying to heal itself by sapping one of the only energy sources it had left: his heart pumping, which had slowed to a sluggish, irregular thump. He tried to move his arms, to reach for the vial in his jacket, or to crawl towards the intercom, but a clammy foot came down on his shoulder. It was hardly strong – but neither was Nikola, right now.

His last thought was that this time, Helen was really going to kill him.

 

Amatheia choked slightly. “You – are you saying we have one of those in my Sanctuary?” She rallied. “But the stats on that tank say it contains ocean water. Salt water kills them, doesn’t it?”

“You’re right. This is a distant cousin, I believe.” Helen leaned closer, narrowing her eyes and studying the camera feed. Something about it seemed rather off. “One which not only survives in salt water, but thrives. I wonder if there was some truth to that ploy they tried to fool everyone with last year, after all… Half-remembered, perhaps, from a time when the species were not so separate as they are now.”

She glanced over at Amatheia. “That’s why you think you set the temperature to freezing. It has the ability to alter memories and perceptions on a scale even greater than the Magoi we’ve encountered in the past. So far, the only shield I’ve discovered is to look at it from a distance through a camera lens or something of that nature. Though I think some part of you must have recognized it for what it was; why else would you have perceived it as a yeti, if you didn’t believe on some level that it needed a winter climate? Unfortunately, this particular Magoi doesn’t require the same conditions. Small wonder you had trouble adjusting for it.”

“If what you’re saying is true, why haven’t we discovered it before this? I check the security feeds regularly.”

Helen nodded. “And if you noticed something was amiss, you would almost certainly go down there to check in person. At which point…”

Amatheia looked rather pale. “Do I need to call my teams back?”

“As long as we have it contained…” The final puzzle piece slotted into Helen’s head, and she looked back at the screen. The water looked quite calm. A little too calm considering there should have been a living creature in there moving around.

“Oh, bloody hell,” Helen said yet again, and catapulted out of the chair. She remembered her airplane going down near Tirich Mir, and how that Magoi had gone for the co-pilot first. The one who was already struggling to cope with what was happening. The weakest target, to a creature who twisted thoughts and memories, would be someone whose grip on reality was already tenuous.

_ Nikola.  _ She bolted.

“Lock down the Sanctuary!” she called over her shoulder.

Amatheia had said Nikola was working in a laboratory on the third level. Helen careened into the elevator, slamming her hands against the buttons, and checked her guns while she was waiting for the elevator to descend.

Last time he’d had a run-in with one of those creatures, she hadn’t arrived in time. This time, she would.

She checked each lab on her way through the corridor, until she reached a sealed door. It was dark inside and she could smell smoke emanating from the room; when she opened it she coughed, her eyes taking a moment to adjust to the dimness.

Nikola was on the floor, all color drained from his face, and once more Helen spotted a creature similar to the one from the beach next to him. Unlike that one, it was clearly injured, though not severely – she thought she spotted burn marks. Still, she wasn’t in the mood to take chances, and she had grabbed a stunner on her way here. She raised it and fired several shots just past the creature.

It keened at the noise and jumped back into the shadows as Helen dashed forward, grabbing Nikola’s arms and dragging him out of the room. She pulled his legs clear of the door and darted to the panel nearby, keying in her override to seal the room to anyone but herself.

Breathing hard, she went to Nikola, kneeling next to him. His heart was barely beating, and he didn’t respond when she touched his face lightly. “Nikola?” Her voice cracked slightly, her hands smoothing over his pale face and damp hair. “Nikola?”

She heard a strangled noise from further down the corridor and looked up to see Henry staring at Nikola with a stricken expression.

“What happened? Is he ok?”

“He will be,” Helen said, wishing she was as certain as she sounded. “Help me get him up. And I’m going to need some answers.”

 

When Nikola woke up, it was blissfully dark, warm, and free of creatures trying to kidnap or kill him. His body was no longer shot through with pain of varying degrees. The titanium bindings were gone, and he could move his arms and hands freely. The gnawing ache of hunger had disappeared. And he could smell Helen’s perfume.

His eyes opened. He was lying in a bed in a room he didn’t recognize, although the horrifically generic decor marked it as one of the guest rooms for visiting Sanctuary VIPs. Outside, he could hear the gentle background noise of the Sanctuary systems humming along and the occasional splash of water.

Turning his head, Nikola saw Helen curled up behind him with one arm almost painfully tight around his waist. Her eyes were closed.

“You’re a bloody bastard and I’m still angry at you,” she murmured, and snuggled closer. “What were you thinking? If you run off like that again, I will shoot you. Multiple times.”

“So, a typical Wednesday then?” Nikola let himself back down to the pillows gently, expecting the motion to kickstart pain everywhere again and being mildly surprised when it did not. His hand found Helen’s, and he slid his fingers over hers with a surge of relief and joy so strong his breath caught in his throat. Earlier today, he had thought he might never be able to see her again, and now here they were, and he never had to leave her again. (Unless she kicked him out, which did seem pretty likely at the moment.)

Helen shot up. “Are you alright?”

Nikola rolled over with a smirk. “Why do you ask? I thought I was a bloody bastard who was suffering eternally in the flames of your fury.”

Seeing he wasn’t in any pain, Helen flopped back down with a glare. “You are.”

Nikola’s muddled memories were beginning to clear a fraction, and he sat up again with a surge of panic. “Helen, did you find anyone with me?”

“Relax,” she said, tugging him back down. “We did, and it’s locked away safely at the moment. There’s nothing to worry about on that score.”

He let himself be pulled back down, but his heart still hammered uncomfortably. “Sounds like something an evil shape-shifting abnormal masquerading as Helen would say,” he muttered. This Helen felt quite real, and there was none of the murky fog surrounding his perception of her that he had come to expect from those sea creatures, but… well, he and reality  _ still  _ weren’t really getting along.

“Nikola, are you trying to get me to kiss you again?” she asked drily.

He flashed a grin at her. “Well, if it’s not an imposition…”

Propping herself up on her elbow, she looked down at him with unmistakable fondness. “And what if I really were an evil Magoi? Would you still want to kiss me quite so badly?”

“A Magoi? Is that what that was?” Nikola frowned. “I thought they were allergic to salt water.”

“It’s a long story, which I shall tell you once you’re rested.” Leaning down, Helen brushed her lips against his in a soft, lingering kiss, before straightening. “And after you’ve showered.”

He sighed. “At least now I  _ know  _ you’re really Helen.”

“I’m so glad.” Her tone was sarcastic, but he thought he caught a hint of honesty beneath it. “Now rest.”

“I feel fine now,” Nikola said, mostly to be contrary.

“I should hope you’d feel better after I put a triple dose of plasma into you.” Her arm tightened around him, and her voice shook slightly before she steadied herself. “You’re very lucky I found you when I did. I – Well, it’s of no consequence. You’ve healed now, but you overtaxed yourself badly. So no light shows or taking on immensely powerful abnormals by yourself for a few days, if you please. Or running a thousand miles.”

Nikola swallowed. “Um. About that…”

“I already know. Erika and Henry told me your ‘theories.’” She sounded strained, and there was an undercurrent of pain in her voice that made fresh tears sting Nikola’s eyes.

“Helen…”

“Don’t, Nikola. Don’t expect me to be grateful for an arrogant, high-handed attempt to  _ protect  _ me,” she infused that word with scorn, “that I neither wanted nor needed.”

Nikola flinched. “I don’t. I admit it, I screwed up, alright?”

“You bloody well did. You could have told me, you know. Do you truly think me so fragile?” Somehow, the sadness and disappointment in Helen’s voice was worse than anything the creature had done to him.

“You know I don’t,” he said vehemently. “But I was there. I saw what it did to you. I – you already had to live your entire life twice, can you blame me for not wanting to make you relive that too?” He was pleading, hoping against hope he hadn’t ruined all of the trust they had rebuilt since his sixty-year absence from her life.

A long silence went by.

At last, Helen sighed. “I do understand, Nikola. And I trust you’re aware there were much better ways to handle the situation, which you ignored with your usual aplomb?”

“In fairness, I had a telepathic abnormal messing with my mind.”

She waited.

“Alright, yes. I really am sorry,” he mumbled.

Helen’s hand slid into his, and she squeezed it. “Just don’t do it again.”

“So… I’m forgiven?”

If he wasn’t mistaken, there was a chuckle from Helen’s direction. “Wanker,” she said, but she was smiling slightly.

An immense weight lifted off Nikola’s chest, leaving him almost dizzy with relief for the second time that day.

“Is that a yes?”

The soft kiss Helen pressed to his neck was the only answer he got, but it was the only one he needed.


End file.
